"It’s Never too Late to Start Living a Life You Love"                                                                                                                                                                 
  John T. Carlsen, Psy.D., Director                                                                              Home
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Top 5 Ways a
Life Coach Can Help You 

Uncover Your Professional Dreams

Few people take the time to think about what they want from their work. Most simply fall into whatever job is available at the time they need it and allow their career paths to unfold from there. Unless they have identified particular goals they want to achieve, few people give their jobs a second thought unless, or until, they become predictable or routine. For many, even the thought that they could make choices about their work lives - much make intentional choices about their next career move - comes as a complete, and welcome, surprise. Most also find a sense of relief.

In the rush of our ever-faster culture's pace, most people fail to realize that they could take time to stop and reflect on how they spend their work time.   Focused on keeping up with their peers, having the latest technology, or achieving and maintaining an expensive lifestyle, many people become slaves to their existing jobs and paychecks.  While they might periodically daydream about a life they wish they could live, they usually resign themselves to "being realistic" and focus on their current responsibilities.  Rather than taking the time they need to think about what they want, they spend free time surfing the Internet, answering e-mail, and  This busy work allows them to distract themselves from thinking about what they want by immersing themselves the tasks at hand.   And, it keeps them dreaming about what they "want" to do as they rationalize what they "have" to do.  In short, they cope with a week they hate by looking forward tor a weekend they might love.

Seems a bit backward, doesn't it?

A career coach offers you the possibility of something different. If you are willing to devote the time and attention, the coach can help you gradually to uncover what you genuinely want from your career and discover the kinds of work that would bring rewards beyond a regular paycheck. These rewards include deep personal satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, and the recognition that you are stretching to use your most natural gifts and talents in meaningful ways. You can identify the environments that fit your temperament and the kinds of people with whom you work best. Imagine how your life could change for the better if you could look forward to, rather than dreading, the return of Monday morning.

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Help You Set Focused, Creative, and Achievable Goals

One of the greatest challenges you face in attempting to change is finding direction and maintaining focus during the process. Given the wide range of available options, the typical career changer has no idea where to begin. Should he or she start by reading the want ads and sending out resumes? Hire a head-hunter? Research to find out which are the hot new careers or growth industries? Read What Color is Your Parachute? The number of choices quickly becomes overwhelming.

Generally, people start planning career changes by finding out what is available in the job market. For someone who needs work immediately, this makes good sense. For someone who considers a career change to increase their satisfaction and fulfillment from work, however, this makes little sense. And, it threatens to put them into the position that caused them frustration in the first place. These people need to take some time to start from within - to think about what they really want - rather than starting with a focus on their environment.

By helping you develop an organized, carefully-planned transition process, a career coach can save you weeks of frustration and delay. He or she can help you to identify small, manageable steps that will uncover the information you need to narrow your choices. The coach can also find ways to help you gain adequate support from people who will hold you accountable for your progress and help you to cope with the often overwhelming ambiguity during this process.

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                    Cultivate Your Professional Network to Discover Job Leads

One of well-kept secrets of the job market is how often employers fill positions from inside their organizations. Many employers rely on people in their informal networks to recommend appropriate job candidates. Rather than taking the time and expense of interviewing a group of complete strangers, they often prefer referrals from people they know. If you are someone who generally maintains a low profile, your chances of being referred are dramatically reduced from what they could be.

To increase your chances of receiving recommendations, a career coach could help you develop your professional network. You probably possess the basic skills essential to networking. By working with a career coach, you could learn how to establish and cultivate the key relationships that would advance your career through increasing your exposure to potential job openings. Finally, your career coach could help you use this network to gain inside knowledge of prospective employers, track down additional sources of information, and gain the support you need to maintain your focus and achieve your goals.

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Target Your Resume and Sharpen Your Interviewing Skills

There are as many opinions about how to write a good resume as there are people giving advice. Unfortunately, most focus only on the superficial: "Use lots of buzz words for your industry," or "Choose a sharp layout and use paper that make you look professional". But, why make your resume work so hard to get you noticed? That is a lot to expect from a single piece of paper in a stack of 100 or 1000. You will get better results if you take time to identify what you have accomplished in past jobs and show prospective employers how they will benefit from your past experience. A career coach can teach you the strategies that make sure your resume actually says something worthwhile with all those carefully-chosen words.

If you want to stand out from your competition in interviews, you need to prepare in advance. Few people actually take the time to sharpen their interviewing skills. But, as with any professional skill, the more you understand about the secrets of dynamic personal marketing, the more effectively you will convince potential employers of the reasons they should hire you. With the guidance of a career coach, you can learn to present your qualifications with authority and confidence.

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Gain the Support You Need to Overcome Obstacles

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For most people, changing careers involves considerable fear and uncertainty. Leaving a familiar situation and venturing into the unknown can challenge our most basic coping skills. Often, people feel embarrassed or ashamed about their desire to do something new with their work lives. So, they decide to "go it alone" and wind up feeling isolated and overwhelmed.

If you have experienced these feelings, you know the challenges of staying focused and motivated in your job hunt. To successfully manage your anxiety reach your goals, you need on-going assistance from others throughout the career change process. Your career coach will help you identify and develop the relationships that will provide the support you need.

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